> May 15, 2005
> The Mystery of the Insurgency
> By JAMES BENNET
>
> WASHINGTON — American forces in Iraq have often been accused of being
> slow to apply hard lessons from Vietnam and elsewhere about how to
> fight an insurgency. Yet, it seems from the outside, no one has
> shrugged off the lessons of history more decisively than the
> insurgents themselves.
>
[...]
>
> Steven Metz, of the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, said
> the insurgency could still be sorting itself out. Yet, he said, "It
> really is significant that even two years in there hasn't been
> anything like any kind of political ideology or political spokesman or
> political wing emerging. It really is a nihilistic insurgency."
------------------------------
Yes, this is the other side of the coin, which needs to be taken into
account before jumping too quickly to facile analogies with Vietnam and
other insurgencies, as I may have done.
My sense is that there is not an "Iraqi insurgency" but many localized and loosely coordinated insurgencies taking place in Iraq, with the initiative resting with the Islamic groups. Whether the reported formation of a new political front uniting the Islamists, nationalists, and what remains of the anti-occupation left around a clear program and political strategy will create a single authoritative and widely respected instrument of these various insurgencies remains to be seen. There have been such reports before. If it does, then that would bring the resistance to a higher political level and address some of the problems referred to in the article you copied.
I'd call the car bombings "barbaric", but I wouldn't call them "nihilistic". They have the clear political end in mind of destablizing and discrediting the Iraqi government and destroying its security forces and ramping up popular pressure on the Americans to leave. It seems counter-intuitive that exploding bombs in crowded markets and main thoroughfares would have this effect. But most every account you read after one of these incidents has civilian bystanders primarily cursing the Americans for bringing this mayhem into Iraq, although there seems no love lost for the Islamists. I'm copying below another NYT commentary by a student of suicide bombings who has concluded they are politically rational rather than irrational acts, committed by secular as well as religious forces in places like Sri Lanka as well as the Middle East. Whether they are the most politically rational actions is another question.
I too would prefer the attacks were restricted to military targets, and that efforts were being made to protect and integrate the civilian population into the struggle, as was mostly the case in Vietnam and other left-led insurgencies, but that is unfortunately not the choice on offer today. It's between supporting the Islamist and Baathist armed struggle against the foreign occupation, or those left-wing forces participating in the US-controlled government for "tactical" reasons, ie. to gain some democratic breathing space in hopes of "eventually" securing an American withdrawal. One is opposed to the other.
I support the armed resistance, warts and all, on principled grounds (the right to militarily resist occupation) and because I think it's important that the US invasion is decisively repelled in Iraq, and seen that way around the world, including in the US. It will make future interventions much more difficult. But, given the political colouration of the resistance, I can understand why there is such ambivalence on the left in supporting it, and why it is has made it more difficult to mobilize antiwar opinion than in the leadup to the US invasion.
Apart from the dubious politics of the resistance, I think we should also understand that their tactics have largely been forced on them by their military weakness. The terrain in not suitable for guerrilla warfare in the way jungles and mountains are. There are no safe sanctuaries to retreat to and to establish model "liberated territories" and a provisional government as a precondition for further advance. I'm no military expert, but it seems to me the Sunni triangle, even under the best revolutionary leadership, can never become another Yenan or Sierra Maestra because it is too flat and exposed and vulnerable - notwithstanding that the kind of model Islamic territories set up in Afghanistan, Iran, and even Fallujah have little appeal, unlike socialism, for modern urban populations.
MG
Blowing up an assumption By Robert A. Pape The New York Times May 19, 2005
CHICAGO - Many people are mystified by the recent rise in the number and the audacity of suicide attacks in Iraq. The lull in violence after January's successful elections seemed to suggest that the march of democracy was trampling the threat of terrorism.
But as electoral politics is taking root, the Iraqi insurgency and suicide terrorism are actually gaining momentum. In the past two weeks, suicide attackers have killed more than 420 Iraqis working with the United States and its allies. There were 20 such incidents in 2003, nearly 50 in 2004, and they are on pace to set a new record this year.
To make sense of this apparent contradiction, one has to understand the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Since Muslim terrorists professing religious motives have perpetrated many of the attacks, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause, and thus the wholesale transformation of Muslim societies into secular democracies, even at the barrel of a gun, is the obvious solution.
However, the presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading, and it may spur American policies that are likely to worsen the situation.
Over the past two years, I have compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003 - 315 in all. This includes every episode in which at least one terrorist killed himself or herself while trying to kill others, but excludes attacks authorized by a national government (like those by North Korean agents against South Korea). The data show that there is far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than most people think.
The leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more than Hamas (54) or Islamic Jihad (27).
Even among Muslims, secular groups like the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades account for more than a third of suicide attacks.
What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause.
Full: http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/05/18/opinion/edpape.php
(Robert A. Pape, an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of the forthcoming ''Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.'' )